“Watch your feet, Bryn,” Sayma murmured as they started up the sloping corridor. “There are pressure plates everywhere and the floor is really uneven.”
“Alright.”
“And it smells funny.”
Brynjolf stopped and sniffed the air. “Hmm. I see what you mean. It smells like there’s something alive. Plants, or…”
Sayma nodded. “That’s what it is. It’s musty, and that’s really strange given that we’re in a desert. Maybe there’s been water seeping in from inside the mountains or something.”
The hallway where the two of them had shared a moment had two openings in its left-hand wall. Each of them led to a descending ramp, and each was blocked by the familiar-looking row of metal bars. Sayma had sighed, looking at those; she’d had enough of wandering through mazes for one lifetime if not more, but there was no help for it.
The entirety of this tomb thus far was built like the rooms containing the pull chains in Al Shedim. Large, square stone tiles covered both the floors and the walls, which leaned toward each other at the top like a pyramid. Unlike those in Al Shedim, though, the floors were buckled and wavy; and Sayma found her boots catching on raised areas as she crept along the hallway. It would be entirely too easy to lose balance and land on one of the deadly pressure plates by mistake.
The first set of rooms they came to had piles of sand inside and cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. She frowned, puzzled; for there were no obvious openings to the outside and yet somehow the sand had infiltrated the space. She was about to continue when a creaking sound from around the next corner stopped her. She pulled out her bow, fitted an arrow to it, and edged around into the opening.
Another of the blackened spectral warriors floated just before her. It wore a red Alik’r-style head cover and carried both a scimitar and a shield, and its eyes glowed a malevolent red. It turned and fixed its gaze on her and for just a fraction of a moment they stared at each other. Brynjolf shouted and rushed forward; but Sayma released her arrow just before he got between her and the specter. It staggered backward and Brynjolf’s sword finished it off.
“Don’t do that, Bryn!” she grumbled as the creature dissolved into a black puddle on the floor. “You almost stepped in front of the arrow. After all this I don’t want to end up shooting you myself.”
“Sorry.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “I should know better. You don’t need to be worrying about me.”
The specter had been guarding a large collection of pottery and vessels of bronze-colored metal, arranged on long, low tables. Sayma eyed one particular pot, thinking about the unremarkable urn that currently held Vitus Perdeti’s ashes. He’d look good in that pot. It’s got flair, like he had. Once this is all over I’m coming back for that thing. That thought was oddly comforting. What wasn’t comforting – the thing that made her uneasy about the space – was the sand. There were at least three more sizeable piles of it in the middle of the room, and she couldn’t see how it had gotten inside.
As they moved toward the room’s far side, what Sayma had assumed was one of the narrow candle niches she’d seen in other places came to life. At least half a dozen small spiders dropped out of the niche onto the floor and skittered toward her; and as she and Brynjolf began to kill those, more emerged from the niche on the opposite side of the doorway. The spiders weren’t hard to stop, but there were a lot of them, and they moved quickly. They were busy for several minutes clearing the room.
“That explains a lot,” she said after she’d sliced the last spider. “There’s no way you could fit five or six spiders that size in a candle niche.”
“They must connect to the outside somehow,” Brynjolf murmured. “The sandstorms blow sand inside.”
“Yes, and moisture too. No wonder it’s falling apart and smells funny.” She walked to the far side of the room to find a pull bar mounted into the wall. “Well here’s our first set of bars to drop. I wonder which.”
“Let’s go see.”
The handle had dropped the bars at the far end of the entry hall. Beyond the row of metal indentations the hall sloped downward, around a corner, then downward again, doubling back on itself in a series of descending ramps. At the bottom was a pair of pressure plates nearly covered in sand. Sayma pointed at them as she hopped over the first, and Brynjolf nodded.
There was a confusing warren of interconnected hallways and dead-end alcoves beyond the pressure plates. They poked their heads into every space, looking for an exit, or a pull chain, or something significant. More of the small spiders poured from wall niches; and while Sayma wasn’t concerned about them, she did worry that the unavoidable noise of their battles might be alerting something larger and more deadly. Eventually they found an opening that led to yet another descending ramp with paired pressure plates at the bottom.
The next room was divided into two areas with metal grating held by pillars shaped like fat, inverted pyramids. The ceiling just past the entryway was partially collapsed and hanging down, and that was clearly one of the openings through which sand and spiders had come. But there wasn’t time to puzzle out the purpose of this cage at the base of the building, for a pair of spectral Alik’r emerged from it and attacked.
Brynjolf took on one of the warriors while she battled the other. Neither of them was especially hard to subdue, but the addition of a fresh wave of spiders made the next few minutes much more difficult than they should have been. On top of that, the ceiling on the far side of this room was even more collapsed, with roots dangling down from above and a strong odor of decaying vegetation hanging in the air. Sayma kept running into the roots and spider webs, and reflexively wiping them away from her face, throwing herself off-balance and making the process of fighting the spiders more difficult than it needed to be. Finally, though, she was able to work her way through the rubble and around to the far side of the grate, where another pull handle was mounted into the side of a round pillar.
“I’d just as soon not linger down here,” Brynjolf said. “I don’t like the looks of this ceiling and after all this work I’d be angry to get buried alive.”
“Me too,” she said, giving the handle a tug and a turn. “All it would take would be one little shake of the mountain to bring it down. Now then. Let’s get out of here and see what we’ve opened.”
The bars back at the first descending hallway had dropped out of sight. Sayma and Brynjolf made their way carefully down the ramp. At the base of it was another room with crumbling ceilings, piles of sand and rubble on the floor, and a spectral warrior on patrol. Sayma was able to creep up behind the creature and dispatch it with a single sweeping slash of her Daedric blade.
“Well done, lass,” Brynjolf murmured. “Like an assassin.”
“Well, if the boot fits…” She smirked. “I’m glad to know I haven’t completely lost my touch.”
“It’s strange to think of you doing that sort of work,” he said.
“Really? Is it so much more different than, say, taking out the bandits I needed to kill to get to Gulum-Ei? I don’t think it is. The biggest difference is knowing you’re going to kill beforehand instead of having to make that decision in the moment.”
“I suppose you’re right.” He sighed. “I wonder how much of the Guild’s rule is just us wanting to feel better about it. It does seem that we end up doing a lot of killing in spite of trying not to.”
“It’s tricky for those of us who do both, like me and…” she trailed off, not wanting to bring up a painful subject.
“Andante. Yes.” He slipped her a look. “Interesting that the two of you have that in common.”
It is interesting. I wonder what it says about Bryn that he was drawn to violent types. She thought once more of the flare of anger he’d shown out by the fire, when he’d told her a bit about his father. Maybe that’s why he is so insistent on the Guild’s rule. We’re all violent, and he’s determined to keep it under wraps if he can.
She watched him as he moved about the room, checking the contents of each vessel, and tried to imagine his broad back sprouting massive wings, his fingers ending in long, deadly claws. She couldn’t suppress a shudder. That was his violence. That’s why he wanted it. He didn’t have to make excuses, as a vampire. He had to kill things to stay alive.
So what does that say about me, that I just kill things?
She shook her head and stepped over the black puddle on the floor in front of her. Beyond the specter’s remains was a pedestal holding a single book. Sayma picked it up and scanned its contents.
“Sadraaka. That’s who is in here, just as we thought. She wanted to be Archmage. If I’m reading it correctly she was behind the assassination of Gauldur by manipulating his three sons. And the last paragraph says that whoever ‘passes the threshold’ will ‘receive her wrath.’”
“I guess that includes all the people who tried to build that town outside. Cursed.”
“Right.”
“And maybe beyond that. Maybe that’s why the forest out there is dead, too. The curse spread.”
“Who knows? Let’s go see if we can find her and put an end to it.”
A doorway to the right led through another corridor and to yet another descending ramp. They entered the room beyond that ramp and jumped as metal bars rose behind them from what had looked like a simple pile of dirt, trapping them inside. This space had cages on either side, in which there were several skeletons each. There was nothing else of note here, though, except for the iron doors set into the familiar carved stone of a barrow, at the end of a short hallway on the other side of the room.
“Nordic barrow?” Brynjolf said, coming up to stand just behind Sayma as she approached the doors.
“Yes and that’s very strange. Regardless, that’s what we’ve got. We must be well into the mountain now.”
She pushed the doors open and moved forward into a large, dark, carved stone chamber much like so many others she’d seen back in Skyrim. The great, primitive heads of the ancient dragon cult towered over the space on either side. Against the wall opposite them a huge stylized face gazed down, overlooking the lone coffin resting atop a raised platform.
“Sadraaka?” Sayma asked, pointing ahead.
“I can’t think who else it would be.”
They had crossed only half the space to the coffin when it burst open and the draugr rose from within. Sayma took aim and fired a single arrow at her before Brynjolf rushed ahead, shouting something about pain.
Bryn, I’m going to strangle you. Don’t get in the way like that!
She stepped left, and then right, trying to get another shot lined up; but Brynjolf was too fast, and too strong. He took only a few moments to slice through the draugr, as if she was nothing at all; and she fell, truly dead at last.
Sayma walked slowly toward the coffin, where Brynjolf was sheathing his sword with a sheepish look on his face.
“Sorry, lass. I’ve gotten so used to fighting out on the road that I don’t even think any more. I just run in. It’s a bad habit.”
In spite of her annoyance, Sayma couldn’t help but chuckle at him. “At least she’s down. Now to see whether it cleared the curse. If we can get out of here, that is. Check around and see if you can find a door. Or a lever or something to raise those bars back in the other room.”
Brynjolf nodded and moved back toward the entrance of the cavern, checking along the sides of the space. Sayma did the same, focusing on the back of the cavern and the area beneath the gigantic face. There was a chest on the floor there; she took the valuables from it and then turned back toward the coffin and grinned. A handle mounted in the base of the coffin had been placed in such a way that nobody would ever have seen it without getting past Sadraaka first. She grinned and pulled it.
“Found it, Bryn,” she called to him. “I think we’re clear now.”
It took them a few minutes to make their way back to the entrance of the tomb and outside. It was full day outside, the light making her squint for a moment; but a sandstorm still swirled around the city, giving the light an odd yellowish cast. Sayma moved back down through the plaza and descended the stairs she had only seen in the dark before, and gasped as she emerged into the town itself.
Eight spectral warriors surrounded an open gazebo like the one she had revealed with magic, back in the ancient Alik’r temple. Sayma started to draw her sword, but the ghosts didn’t move; they knelt in a posture of supplication, each facing what appeared to be a book suspended over the open basin in the gazebo. She walked slowly toward them, and none of them paid her the least attention.
The book hovering in mid-air was marked with the Daedric letter “O” on its cover. Sayma reached for it; but as her fingers made contact it disintegrated, as if it was made of pure energy, parts of it flying away as it dissipated.
“Oh!” she cried, pulling her hand back in surprise. A moment later she realized that the ghosts had vanished along with the book. She swiveled back to scan the surrounding village and saw that the sandstorm had stopped; sun was streaming down into places that probably hadn’t seen it for some time. Brynjolf approached from behind her.
“We did it,” he said. “I can feel it.” He looked around and a slow smile broke across his face. “They’re finally at rest.”
“I think you’re right,” Sayma agreed. He’s thinking of Dynjyl. I know he is. We need to put him to rest as well. “It’s wonderful.” She walked slowly around the gazebo, admiring its beautiful tile work, and turned to look back up at the elegant exterior of the ancient tomb. “What a shame that they had to be so angry for so long. And had to frighten me so badly.” She took a deep breath and stretched her arms out behind her back. “Well then. Now it’s time to find that Cowl. Let’s get out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t really know.”
They made their way back through the now-peaceful abandoned town. Sayma couldn’t help but feel bittersweet about it. It was a beautiful place, and it might have been every bit as full of life as Ben Erai if not for the vengeful spirit of Sadraaka.
It’s always people overreaching, wanting more power, that cause the problems. Always. Sometimes it’s a person like Ulfric. Sometimes it’s a person like… me, and multiple people pay the price. I wonder why we can’t just be content with what we have.
They emerged through the great stone walls to see clearly what had been obscured in the nighttime sandstorm before: just down the hill, directly in front of them, was a delicious-looking oasis, its pool reflecting the sun in lazy ripples. Sayma was suddenly aware of her body. She’d been crying, and sweating, and buried in sand and bones and draugr and spider webs for what felt like forever, and she felt sticky and disgusting. She turned to grin at Brynjolf.
“Come with me, Red. We’re getting clean before we do a single thing more.”
“Sayma…” he protested.
“Brynjolf,” she replied, grabbing his hand. “Look, I am certain that I smell, under this armor. You’ve been fighting at least as hard as I have. I won’t accuse you of smelling bad, but… It’s not as if we’ve never seen each other bathe before. I’m getting clean and so are you. No arguments.” She started pulling him down the hill; and after a few reluctant trudges in that direction he laughed and started forward.
“Alright. You win. It’ll feel good.”
It was awkward at first, shedding the armor knowing full well that he was at the other end of the pool, possibly watching her do so. As soon as she was out of it, though, and splashing the tepid water over her body, all thoughts of being self-conscious ceased, washed away by the delight of feeling cool and clean again. She used sand to scrub her skin, and dunked her head into the deepest part of the water, reveling at the opportunity to massage her scalp clean; and she laughed as she came up for air and heard Brynjolf humming and splashing as he washed himself as well. She snuck a glance toward him and admired. In the bright sunlight his pale skin looked even lighter, the definition of his back muscles even clearer, and she found herself wishing she dared to approach him.
No. He only kissed me because I was upset, and because I started it. He’s been with Andante all this time. He doesn’t want me. He just wanted to comfort me. I’m certain of it. And I wouldn’t even know how to ask.
She sighed, and pulled herself back out of the water to begin dressing again.
This armor needs scrubbing, too. It’s nice to be clean and now I have to put on dirty clothing. Oh well. At least it’s a little bit of a…
Come to me. Now. Come here.
She dropped the piece of armor she’d been holding; it splashed into the pool as she cried out in surprise. Brynjolf whirled.
“What’s wrong?”
His eyes scanned her, and then his gaze rose to meet hers, his eyes wide. Sayma found herself looking at something she’d never seen before and had never expected to see in her lifetime.
Brynjolf was blushing.
He might have tried to deny it, but he would have failed. Brynjolf was a pale, pale man and the red of his cheeks at that moment stood out like a beacon.
She was, too. She was certain of it; she could feel the color rising to her face as she looked at the man who had been her husband standing nude in an oasis. A part of her mind couldn’t help but appreciate the fact that he was still in every bit as good condition as he’d ever been. Another part of her mind hoped wildly that she still looked as good as she once had, after having had a child, standing as she was in an equally unclothed state.
“I… heard him again,” she managed to squeak. “More definite, this time. Louder. He said ‘Come to me, now. Come here.’ I was startled, that’s all.” She covered her embarrassment by leaning over to retrieve the armor from the water. “And now I’m going to be soggy for awhile. Well, it was pretty dirty anyway.”
She didn’t look back up at Brynjolf, but rather began squeezing the water through her clothing and putting herself back into it. After a few moments she heard him chuckle.
“Sorry about that, lass. I wasn’t meaning to… well…”
It finally struck her how ludicrous the situation actually was, and she started to laugh. “It’s ok, Red. It’s awkward, but it’s not as though we’ve never seen each other before.” She started pulling on her boots and dared to slip a glance at him; he’d already put on his leathers and was strapping the heavy bandolier back around his body. “You’re, um, still looking good for an old man.”
He snorted. “Old man. Shor’s bones. After all the time you and Andante spent trying to convince me that I wasn’t old, now I have you and Dynny telling me that I am. I can’t win.” But he raised his head and smiled at her, his hair dripping down over his armor; and his green eyes sparkled in a way that told her he was pleased to have had the compliment anyway. “So where is this voice coming from? Have you got any sense of it?”
She finished strapping on her weapons and her pack and stood to look around. Where are you? I’ll come to you but I don’t know where to go.
Here.
This time there was a direction to the voice she heard, and she turned and pointed toward it.
“South and west. I think… I think it’s near that outpost we found, where the two guards from Ben Erai were camping. Somewhere in that area.” They had passed by the encampment not long after leaving Ben Erai, stopping to speak to the guards and being greeted only with grunts.
“It’ll take us some time to get there from here. We’d best get going.” He peered up at the sky. “I have a feeling about this. Look at how hazy it is over to the west. We should be broiling but it’s not as bad as all that. I think we’re in for another sandstorm.”
She squinted and shaded her eyes, and looked west. It was faint, but she could see what Brynjolf had been referring to; a line of brown near the limits of her vision that rose higher against the horizon with each moment.
“I see it. Let’s get going, then.” She climbed up the hill past the oasis and turned to take one last look at the city walls behind them. I’ll never forget this place. I thought I’d lost him forever. Instead, I ended up helping him put dozens of people to rest. I wonder if this is what Dardeh felt like when he lifted the mists out of Sovngarde. She stopped for a moment and shook her head. Ridiculous. He saved the world. I just helped … settle a little bit of it.
Brynjolf was watching her, quietly, when she turned back toward the southwest. She gazed at his calm green eyes and smiled, then broke into the trot that covered ground without exhausting her.
He still has beautiful eyes.
They ran in silence, exchanging only glances as they went and stopping only a few moments now and then for sips of water. They skirted the edge of the mountains, and passed through the gap between those and Al Shedim. It was eerily quiet, neither dune rippers nor wolves interrupting their passage; but with each passing moment the sky grew darker and the breeze a bit stronger. By the time they topped the crest of a dune and saw the lamps and campfire of the outpost, there was no denying it: they were in the midst of another sandstorm.
Brynjolf pulled his hood up over his head and stood closer to her.
“So here we are. Now what? Where are we going?”
She threw the long scarf of her hood up in front of her face and looked around. “I’m not sure. I had such a strong feeling that it was this area, but…”
Here.
The voice was stronger, louder in her mind, and to the southeast. She turned and peered in that direction, through the blowing sand, and saw the bulk of a stony hill in the mid-distance. She pointed.
“There. I think. We’ve gone around that hill from most sides already but we must have missed something.”
Brynjolf nodded and started in that direction. “Let’s get going, then. Maybe we can get out of this sand.”
They fought their way through the storm to the base of the hill, and then around the edges of it. Sayma couldn’t tell what direction she was facing any longer, because just as it had been approaching Sadraaka’s lost city it had turned dark as night and the air was full of sand, and the howling of the wind stripped all sounds but it from the world. Suddenly, just in front of her, the ground dropped away into a trench. She stumbled down into it, unable to save herself from falling face-first into the sand; and when she reached the bottom and regained her balance, spitting sand out of her mouth, she turned to see Brynjolf rushing down the slope after her with his sword drawn.
“Look out, lass!” he yelled. She rolled to the left barely in time to avoid the snapping teeth of a wolf. It was the same color as the surrounding sand, and the air, and if not for Brynjolf’s warning she would have been mauled. He barreled down the dune and into it, and a moment later it was dead.
“Are you alright?” he asked, stepping up beside her.
“Yes. Thanks, Bryn. I can’t believe I actually fell down. I feel like an idiot.”
“Easy to lose your bearings right now. Look, there’s a path into the rock here.” He pointed behind her, and she swiveled to see a post with a tattered, mustard-yellow banner whipping about in the storm. “Watch your feet. It looks pretty steep over here. But I think we should head down this way. It might be where we’re supposed to go and even if it isn’t, maybe we can get out of the wind for a bit.”
She nodded, drew her sword, and dropped over the edge of some exposed boulders, deeper into the gully. Sayma edged her way forward, slowly, checking each step before she shifted her weight onto it. What had seemed to be just a trench in the sand became a ravine, a crevice leading inward through the solid rock of the hill. The deeper they went, the less fiercely the wind blasted them; and it almost seemed as though the oppressive darkness was lifting.
A flicker of movement up ahead of them caught Sayma’s attention. It was light – glowing light, much as they had seen in the cursed town. She stopped, pointed down the crevice, and turned to Brynjolf.
“Do you see that?”
“Aye.”
“Another one of the cursed Alik’r?”
He stared down the length of the passage before them, frowning. “It doesn’t feel right. That curse was confined, in a small area. Once we removed it all of them disappeared. This is something else. Be on your guard.”
Sayma nodded, drew her swords, and continued carefully through the meanders at the bottom of the gully. The closer they got to the light, the more clearly she could see that it was in fact a specter: a powerfully-built man, from the looks of it. She circled around a large, dead tree into the open and gasped in surprise.
Here, in the bottom of the center of the mountain but open to the sky, was a small house built in the same style as those of Ben Erai. The stucco was gone in places, no doubt eroded by sandstorms and ages, but the home itself stood solid and strong. She could see stairs leading up to a rooftop terrace. And on the front stoop was a long, low bench, on which sat the specter of a large man in barbarian armor, a style that bared his chest and arms to the sky. He raised his head and stared at her, seeming to pay no attention to Brynjolf.
“You have come at last,” he said; and Sayma gasped.
“It’s you!”
It was the voice she’d been hearing in her head for so long; a voice both like and unlike her father’s voice and her brother Dardeh’s voice. Deep, resonant, with a hint of hidden power, and, now that she was hearing it in person, full and rich.
“I am Jine af-Avik, of Stros M’Kai. And you are Dagnell at-Dadarh. Daughter of my son. It is time for you to finish it.”
Sayma’s hand dropped, and the point of her sword sank into the sands.